Playmate magazine is celebrating however many years in publication by opening a South Seas island theme park. They need concession stands, handi-cap accessible restrooms, twirly rides, alligator ticket-takers and exotic stuff from real islands. So they send an expedition to Obelisk Island get some. And boy, do they hit pay dirt — a Volkswagen-sized egg that looked like it came out of a six-passenger b*tthole.

The egg hatches and out pops a prehistoric parrot called Gappa. (Note: Gappa is not it’s name, but rather in reference to a race of prehistoric birds with f’d-up beaks.) Bringing the Gappa back to Japan was the first mistake. Thinking it didn’t have parents was the other. Gappa starts growing at a rate of a foot and a half per day. In a month it’ll be as tall as all the other Gappi in his school.

Finally noticing junior has gone missing, mama and papa Gappa come calling. Both are 200 feet tall, have leathery gargoyle wings, honkin’ beaks, a Godzilla-esque tail and a shark fin sticking out of their skulls. Quite stylish by any prehistoric standard. Attempts by the military to impede Mr. and Mrs. Gappa’s search ends up with the Armed Forces getting the business end of a beak. And speaking of bird mouths, when the Gappa arrive out of Sagami Bay, one has an octopus in its mouth — and keeps it there for actually quite a while (they’re kinda chewy). Calculating scale, the octopus is roughly the size of an underwater school bus.

Someone in a lab coat gets the idea to bring baby Gappa back to its parents so that mom and pop might quit breaking Tokyo. (They don’t call ’em scientists for nothing.) Everyone involved manages to get the little squirt into a net and lift it with blimps, which are towed by helicopters and delivered to the airport. (There are no more planes as the Gappa canceled all arriving/departing flights.)

The Gappas are reunited and fly happily into the sunset, which was made really pretty by smoke and flames from the burning city. “If there’s one thing the Gappa taught me, is that life is not all about ambition,” exclaims one scientist. Glad he got arrived at some introspection.

Made in the turbulent 1967s, Monster From A Prehistoric Planet (aka, Giant Beast Gappa, Daikyojû Gappa, Gappa: The Triphibian Monster) is full of cheese-y fun effects, one million explosions, wholesale destruction, and a little Japanese boy painted to look like an island native. (I could tell because his lips were pink while the rest of him was coconut brown.)